Over feed or Under feed

Is it better to over feed or under feed your fish?.
Because they seem to be hungry all the time .
:questionmark:

 

overfeed = KILLING THEM WITH KINDNESS. dont let their constant begging for food fool you.

 

Or feed them as much as they will eat in 2 minutes, twice a day. It's better to feed smaller amounts more often than one huge amount at once.

 

I have feed enough for them to eat in approx 2 minutes once a day. Skip day 7. Been doing this for years.

 

I am probably going to get smacked on the knuckles for this...My fish are rather lucky if they get fed everyday. But when I do feed them, i FEED them.

 

I guess less is best when it comes to feeding fish. :eating:

 

I feed high quality food 4 times a day, my fry grow fast, and my fish are healthy and breed well. Does call for lots of water changes though, but seeing that I have all my tanks on one system, its easy. I just siphon the bottoms, and everything fills up automatically.

 

Definitely less is best. More is far, far worse! Often I only feed mine every 3rd or 4th day, (the bichirs, anyway) but then they get fed a lot.

 

Hi

This depends entirely on what fish you are keeping and their age.
You buy Juvenile Discus and feed them once a day, skipping every other day, well, its your fish but they'll be wasted!
Same goes for many other cichlids.

My fry gets fed 8 to 10 times a day, and my adults about 3 to 4 times a day.
Same goes for my Ram fry, and that way I manage to get them to 3.5cm in just over 2 months. Wont happen if you feed them every other day.

I think- lazy keepers feed less. . . If you do ample maintenance, feed a large variety, I dont see why you cant feed most fish often. There are exceptions Im sure, before I get blasted, but in general, just like all animals, a healthy digestive system is designed to DIGEST!

Rgds

Marco

 

yeah i was thinking about discus when i first read this post. prof bellstedt , mentioned they need feeding to get them to optimal size, up 6 or 8 times a day.
the bigger they get more healthy fry would be ( okay we not all say breeding wise, but would you rather have a discus the size of a saucer or a side plate , id go for the side plate , bigger the better. of course most of us work so how do we get the feeding right? .

 

its really dependant on a few things i think, fish in general do grow according to how much you feed them, or perhaps i should say how often, and also it depends on what type of fish.


the size of the fish also must be taken into consideration. neons only require a small pinch of food, my 30cm polypterus on the other hand could probably swallow a mouse whole, and there are 3 of them.


in the case of my tinfoils, i feed them to a very strict regime, 2 teaspoons of tetrabits per day, or they would grow out of control, they share a tank with loaches, bala sharks and polypterus, now the bala sharks share the tetrabits with the tinfoils, as for the rest, they are lucky if the large fast tinfoils and bala sharks let them get to anything, these guys ZOOM up and down the tank at lightning speed and clear everything up in under 30 seconds. but this way, they dont get to 20cm in 6 months and outgrow the tank.

as for the rest, loaches and polypterus, these guys i really want to fatten up, because i dont mind seeing them growing, so after lights are out, they get lots of tetra bits, bloodworm, frozen chicken breast etc, in the mornings you can see everyone's tummy is nicely rounded. the growth rate i've seen in yoyo loaches with this routine is they go from a very skinny 4cm to a nice and fat, round and healthy 5 and a half cm in about 2-3 months

my tiger barbs, i also like to to see growing very very fast, so these guys get multiple small feedings as often as i can (say 2hr intervals when i'm home, otherwise its once in the morning and twice at night - growth rate is something like they grow from 3cm to 5cm or 6cm in about 4-6 months, but with these guys its SMALLER feedings, but much more frequently.

when you are feeding more often than usual, you cannot be lazy with the water changes tho, or you will be heading for trouble.

i do not skip any days feeding, but i do believe it is beneficial to do this, and you do give your filters a bit of a break, or rest period on these days i think too. (from what i've learnt from @Marco, this is not recommended for discus)

so, i think it depends on the fishkeeper, the type of fish and the time available to him for tank maintenance (water changes), smaller feeding will require less maintenance, this is something that cannot be overlooked.

HONORABLE MENTION: i had 2 hi-fin pangasius cat fish (iridescent shark) that went from 6cm to about 13cm in 2-3 weeks, feeding lots of frozen chicken cubes every night after lights out. fastest growing fish i have ever seen!!

 

This refers to Angels, but it makes for good reading: http://www.urmia.ac.ir/vrf/Shared%20Documents/pdf/vol-2%20no-2/97-.pdf

 

Personally I feed my fish twice a day and as much as they can eat within 2 mins. If you have barbs in community setup they eat a lot faster than the others so I tend to feed a little more so my angels and bolivian rams get some food.
I normally leave one day a week out which is usually saturday or sunday which is water change day.

When I had malawi mbuna, I would feed smaller serving 3-4 times a day and as much as they can eat in 30sec(malawis can eat a lot in just 30secs), this was to help reduce the aggression because they are very aggressive by nature and being hungry would just make them that much more grumpy I think.

As someone said previously in another post only lazy fish keepers dont like to feed so they dont have to do the extra maintenance but I have been using this method for the last 2 years and its been working well for me.

 

I feel that most aquarium fish are being overfed in my opinion.

 

My general feeding on both my tanks, Rainbows with loaches and cories in one and Lake Tanganicans in the other, is dried food in the mornings and frozen at night.
In the Rainbow tank there is no differance in their reaction to the feeding as it seem they are always hungry. Everything that goes to the bottom gets eaten by the loaches and cories. My water quality doesn't suffer due to over feeding, which I know I do, do belive that the plants help with this.
In the Tanganican tank the dried food gets frowned apon as they would rather wait for the frozen food and thus I have to keep a close eye on the water. I do counter this with weekly water changes and it stays fine.
If you are not willing to put the effort into it, with some luck, it will not work, weather you under or over feed your fish
i

 

Well done there Firefly. Think about a fish swimming about in its natural environment. Do they get get sufficient nourishment each and every day? Most probably not! Here we come along with highly concentrated food and we want to feed them because they beg! Fish are huge creatures of habit. My 1000l Malwai tank is proof of this. When I walk to it, up till about 3;30pm, I get a completely different reaction from the fish. Before they swim around as normal. After they follow my every movement, especially when I get closer to the tank.
Fish can quite easily go a couple of days without being fed. I have watched, guppies in a tank at home, picking on the sponge filter that is in the tank. These poor fish sometime go 3-4 days without me feeding. They are extremely healthy.
Hungry fish are healthy fish.

 

A caution to feeding more than once a day.
Back a couple of years ago, when we had the load shedding, I used to feed my fish twice per day. With the power outages I started to lose fish. Spoke to my knowledgable mate in Cape Town and was advised to cut it down to once per day. Problem solved.
When fish eat they require more oxygen to help their bodies digest it. If I am aware of an impending outage I will not feed my fish from about a day or two before the outage. Advise customers to do the same.

 

This thread has become hotly debated. I like that! It shows you care for your fish. There are so many mixed variations, and they can't really be compared. For instance, a breeder with mono species tanks with fish that need to be grown in the shortest possible time, and having back-up generators, etc, is not in the same position as the guy with a mixed tank, working 8-5, and living with power cuts. But we all adapt and do whats best for our fish. If your fish are healthy, keep on doing what you do.